"You see," she said, "he writes distinctly as one who has, or expects to have, money. Listen! 'I did no particular good out there,'" she read, "'but I have brought something home with me which will mean a fortune of some sort or another. I expect you have had quite enough of your country life, and you won't object to coming and sharing it with me. I am rather a rough sort, and I have a few vices that your respected uncle Sarsby knows all about, but I fancy you will get a better time with me than with that solemn old prig. I'd like to do what I can for you, though we haven't seen much of one another, but your mother was the best sister a man ever had, and for her sake I look upon you as the only relative I've got worth counting.'" She looked up at him eagerly. "Now tell me," she asked, "would he have written that if he hadn't something--jewels, or estate, or something of that sort, which he knew was going to bring him in money?" "It doesn't sound so," Deane admitted. She thrust the letter back into her pocket. "You will help me," she said, her face glowing, her eyes full of anticipation. "We will go through his papers carefully. We will find out, somehow or other, what he meant. Oh! It is good to think that I have only a few more days to eat and to sleep in this ghastly wilderness." "You may be disappointed," he reminded her. "Never!" she answered. "My uncle was no fool. What he had I shall discover." "You may be disappointed," he continued, "in the things which wealth itself brings you. You may find life not so very much more wonderful a thing in the city than here in the wilderness." "Don't you believe it!" she exclaimed, with a scornful laugh. "I am not that sort. I am not an artist who can sit about here for days and potter about with a paintbox, and look at a sunset or a streak of wild lavender, or the shimmering of the yellow sands, as though it were something so marvelous that life itself stood still while they realized it. I like beautiful places and beautiful things, but I hate the impersonality of it all. I want to feel the touch of lace and furs and fine linen, to eat soft food, to listen to music, to ride when I want to, to sleep when I want to, to have friends who admire me, men friends worth speaking to, different from these yokels round here. I suppose I have got it in my blood," she added, with a little laugh. "The milk-and-water ways of life don't attract me. I want the big things." "Do you know what the big things are?" he asked. "When I have found my way where I mean to find it, I shall know," she answered. "Here, one might live till one's hair was gray and one's looks had passed, live--if you call it living--and never once see over the wall. When I have come so that I can see over the wall, then I will tell you, if you are still curious, what the big things of life are for me!" CHAPTER XVIII AN EXPENSIVE KEY